#5: Facilitation Skills

In this series, we look at 15 skills that add impact to your role, whether you work within an organisation or as a self-employed professional.

This week, we look at Facilitation skills?e.g. opening up and wrapping up meetings, ensuring vital voices are heard etc.

This will be a vital skill when exploring options and budget, more on this next month. Good facilitation skills also add value throughout the delivery stages of the project, where the seeds of the next project are often sown.?

Like different instruments playing together, facilitation is the ability to do multiple things at once: ensuring voices are heard but equally knowing when to interrupt, keeping the energy high while still focusing on substantial issues, maintaining focus on common goals while still nurturing engagement. Not surprisingly, this takes practice and experience. Let’s look at some examples.

Opening up a meeting

How do you open your meetings? Do you dive straight into a prearranged agenda? Or do a summary of the last meeting?

Here are some pitfalls worth avoiding:

• Diving straight into content without “taking the temperature” in the room. This is particularly important in virtual meetings.
• Imposing an agenda, into which others have had no influence
• Having no agenda at all and allowing the discussion to wander.

The key skill here is to co-create the agenda with attendees at the very beginning. Of course, you may have an agenda, but it’s worth taking a few minutes to allow others to input into that, even if it’s just to re-order a few points.? At the very least, it enhances the chance that they will stay engaged in the meeting.

It’s worth remembering that many meetings today are informal in tone. Therefore presenting a printed agenda will often not feel appropriate. You are therefore more likely to be doing the co-creation informally.

Advanced Consulting Skills, summary

For your reference, here is the full table of 15 advanced skills that add impact and value to all forms of professional work. In this edition, we covered #5. More to follow in subsequent newsletters.

#1. Context questioning?

#2. Sharing insights, co-creating new insights with clients?

#3. Reframing requirements?

#4. Exceeding expectations?

#5. Compelling presentations and emails

#6. Facilitation skills e.g. opening a meeting, wrapping up

#7. Boosting / maintaining project momentum?

#8. Influencing skills e.g. overcoming objections

#9. Discussing money & resources?

#10. Doing proposals with the client, not for the client

#11. Anticipating the next step of the journey during delivery

#12. Building rapport and empathy

#13. Uncovering and communicating value e.g. success stories

#14. Boosting client career-success, getting referrals

#15. Juggling competing commitments

Bringing skills to life

The fastest route to higher revenue is doing higher-value work. The simplicity of this is almost shocking.? Almost everything else takes longer and/or costs more.

Typical examples of higher value work undertaken by recent clients include:

• Tailoring a technical / financial / legal offer with up-front insights, so that the value is clearer
• Doing essentially the same work, but with better customers, who not only pay more but put more effort into the programme
• Challenging clients and partners to contribute more to the end-result
• Bringing fresh perspectives to clients so that your judgement is more respected
• Being fluent in the risks of adopting an inadequate/cheaper approach

Do you want to add more impact and value in your work??

If so, you are welcome to schedule a call here .

? John Niland, August 2024. For enquiries about John as coach or speaker, on topics of self-worth and professional identity,

see www.selfworthacademy.com or email [email protected]